Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
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Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#2I'm curious how this relates to Skia (the library that handles cross-platform rendering for Chrome and Flutter). Seems like this could be an alternative backend but also could serve as faster replacement?
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#3Mozilla peeps, is it conceivable that this could eventually get into firefox, or is it not the right fit in some way.
There was a recent discussion about map rendering and I commented to "just convert to SVG and let the browser render it" to which someone said that's too slow, to which I said "so improve the browsers vector rendering" rather than do a high performance renderer just for map software.
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#4I'm curious how this relates to Skia (the library that handles cross-platform rendering for Chrome and Flutter). Seems like this could be an alternative backend but also could serve as faster replacement?
forma is geared towards vector-graphics heavy use cases. A very good example would be Lottie or Rive animations or games that make use of vector graphics. Another possible use case would be places where you need a very small software renderer, like an OS's early boot.
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#5I'm very happy to see this work! The era of rendering vector graphics in GPU compute shaders is upon us, and I have no doubt it we'll start seeing these in production soon, as there's just such a performance advantage over CPU rendering, and I believe trying to run vector 2D graphics through the GPU rasterization pipeline doesn't quite work.
This code is simpler than Vello (the new name for piet-gpu), focused on vector path rendering. It's also a strong demo of the power of WebGPU, while also having a performant software-only pipeline. I definitely encourage people to take a closer look.
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#6This is cool. Being able to render SVG animations natively, without having to embed a browser, is awesome.
The map of Paris rendered in 40ms on my M1 Air which is crazy considering it's a 14MB file with tons of overlapping shapes.
I'm guessing supporting stroke is difficult because you would need to ultimately convert them to shapes which can travel through the pipeline.
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#7I'm very happy to see this work! The era of rendering vector graphics in GPU compute shaders is upon us, and I have no doubt it we'll start seeing these in production soon, as there's just such a performance advantage over CPU rendering, and I believe trying to run vector 2D graphics through the GPU rasterization pipeline doesn't quite work. This code is simpler than Vello (the new name for piet-gpu), focused on vect…
Thank you for the endorsement. Looking forward to collaborating more with you on 2D graphics.
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#8I’ve just filed an issue (https://github.com/google/forma/issues/11) describing how, on an old GPU (AMD 7990) but using the CPU device, it fails to start.
This looks like an issue with wgpu-rs, but am I wrong in assuming that the CPU device would work regardless of the graphic card?
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#9Neat. Just in time for a project I'm working on. Thanks for sharing!
Re: Show HN: Forma – An efficient vector-graphics renderer
#10I'm curious how this relates to Skia (the library that handles cross-platform rendering for Chrome and Flutter). Seems like this could be an alternative backend but also could serve as faster replacement?
forma is geared towards vector-graphics heavy use cases. A very good example would be Lottie or Rive animations or games that make use of vector graphics. Another possible use case would be places where you need a very small software renderer, like an OS's early boot.
about a decade ago I wanted to get started prototyping gameplay with vector graphics and I was dismayed at the state of available libraries to do this efficiently. I'm glad things seem to be getting much better in this space!